.htaccess: multiple document roots based on IP

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February 29th, 2012, 09:26 AM

Northie

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.htaccess: multiple document roots based on IP

Hi,

we have a static IP to our office and a dedicated server for all our client's website (off site, at some secret location near slough).

Ideally I'd like to be able to client deploy test sites on the final domain/url and want to do something like this

Code:

if(client ip == our ip) {
     documentRoot = /path/to/dev/space
} else {
     documentRoot = /path/to/live/space
}

is this possible in .htaccess?

(yes, I'm using apache!)

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March 11th, 2012, 10:22 AM

jharnois

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Let's see if I understand this correctly. You have two servers, one is your dev/preview server located in your office and one is your production server located in a data center. You'd like to have one Apache config that's shared across both servers but that uses a different DocumentRoot based on whether you're in the office or not

It sounds like your goal is to have your dev/preview as close to production as possible . If that's the goal, I don't think you're going to reach it with this approach because you'll need clientdomain.com to resolve differently, and that doesn't mimic production very well.

I believe the common approach is to use two DNS entries and two VirtualHosts, which results in two websites with two DocumentRoots. Set DNS so that clientdomain.com (and www.clientdomain.com) point to the production server while beta.clientdomain.com points to your dev server (office IP). Then create a VirtualHost for beta.clientdomain.com that has a DocumentRoot of /path/to/dev/space and one for clientdomain.com that has a DocumentRoot of /path/to/live/space. I believe order is important if you have a wildcard, catch-all ServerAlias, since *.clientdomain.com would match beta.clientdomain.com if it wasn't first.

Code:

NameVirtualHost *

<VirtualHost *>
  ServerName beta.clientdomain.com
  DocumentRoot /path/to/dev/space
  ...
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
  ServerName clientdomain.com
  ServerAlias *.clientdomain.com
  DocumentRoot /path/to/prod/space
  ...
</VirtualHost>

Another approach is to use clientdomain.yourdomain.com.

You can then use this same config file on both dev and production. Note, however, that Apache will probably complain about missing DocumentRoots on startup.

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March 12th, 2012, 04:15 AM

Northie

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Join Date: Oct 2007

Location: North Yorkshire, UK

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Quote:

No, I'm a senior developer, I know how the web works, I'm not that stupid.

But you're right in some respects.

I develop locally for everything, and have two dedicated servers in the datacentre -stage and live.

However, this particular client has caused us to purchase propitiatory software paid for on a per-server licence cost. To keep the costs down I want to have stage and live for this client on the production server (where we've installed the software)

Being different servers, the IP of the stage and live servers are different, but if I put both on the live then the IP is the same.

Before we got the stage server we used to put stage and live on the same dedicated server and use sub domains, exactly in the way you describe (although it's all managed through plesk)

The problem for me now is that this obscure software the client requires reads the server name and bases business logic on that, so I as far as I can see I can't reliably test www.client.com on client.mycompany.com.

The other issue is that the client's old site is also hosted on the live server...............

............Just had a thought.....

I'll move client old site to stage and update DNS then in my hosts file override DNS to live for my testing, then switch DNS back again once new site is working

Last edited by Northie : March 12th, 2012 at 06:45 AM.